general help w gmail

I feel silly asking this but can't figure it out. I use my gmail account specifically to get messages from a google groups boating forum. I have a work account w outlook and I use k-9 on my phone for that.

I know that google doesn't have folders, but labels. I created a label 'xyz' for all email coming from that google group. My question is, how do i not have all these items show in my inbox?

In outlook, i can set up a rule that all email coming from abc@xyz.com goes into the xyz folder, and doesn't clutter my inbox.

How do I do this in gmail. I have all my email messages showing that they belong to xyz label, so my rule is working, but I want them not showing in my inbox.

OK. so specifically, I have about 2k messages from this forum I subscribe to, and another 200 general messages. They are interspersed. The messages from the forum all have a label. How can I somehow select these messages all at once to archive them? I can see how to do it manually, but that will take forever. Thanks for any advice.